A side-by-side comparison of Nezha's backstory in JTTW and FSYY
(Sth I've been working on for a while, as quick reference material for Nezha's story in the two novels specifically that doesn't go into the broader mythos.)
-Born with the characters "Ne/Na" on one hand, and "Zha" on the other
-Has 2 older brothers and 1 younger sister: Jinzha, who worked as a guardian deity and attendant of the Buddha, Mucha, who was the disciple of Guanyin, and Li Zhenying, who's said to be 7 years old in JTTW (Chapter 83).
-There's also Diyong/Lady Earth Flow, the adopted mice sister that had eaten the Buddha's candle, was captured by Li Jing and Nezha, and spared on the Buddha's order.
-She shows up in Chapter 80, as a demoness who kidnapped Tripitaka for the purpose of marriage, and is subsequently recaptured to face celestial judgement.
-Three days after his birth, Nezha went off into an unknown ocean, stepped on a crystal palace and toppled it, and caught a flood dragon to use its tendon as a belt
-After that, Li Jing tried to kill him for being a menace, and Nezha did the "Return his flesh and bones to his parents" thing in anger
-His soul then drifted off to the Buddha's place, who performed the Lotus Resurrection Thing by reciting a mantra
-He then subdued 96 caves of demons, and went after Li Jing to take revenge for the "forced suicide" thing
-Li Jing pleaded to the Buddha for help, who gave him a pagoda with Buddhas sculptured on every level, and told Nezha to call the Buddha (on the pagoda) as his father from now on.
-The weapons he used in his Three-headed Six-Armed Form: The Demon-slaying Sword + Demon-cutting Blade, Demon-binding Rope + Demon-subduing Vajra, Embroidered Ball, Fire Wheel (held in his hand)
-Is the reincarnation of Taiyi's oldest disciple, Spirit Pearl/Lingzhu Zi
-Is destined to be the Vanguard of the Zhou army in the upcoming War of the Investiture
-Has 2 brothers: Jinzha, disciple of Wenshu Guangfa Tianzun, and Muzha, disciple of Sage Puxian. (FSYY's quirk of making popular Buddhist deities into Daoist sages in a trenchcoat is at play again.)
-Mother was pregnant with him for three years, gave birth to a ball of flesh
-Jumps out of the ball of flesh when Li Jing cuts it open, wearing his Qiankun Ring as a bracelet, Huntian Sash wrapped around his stomach
-Was immediately taken by Taiyi as a disciple the next day, who told Li Jing that, born in the hour of Chou, Nezha is destined to break 1700 prohibitions against killing
-A 6 ft tall 7-years old (FSYY's sense of scale is really weird, like all old novels)
-Asked to go out and play in the river during summertime, unknowingly created a shockwave in the water with his sash that shook Ao Guang's palace in the East Sea.
-Ao Guang sent a Yaksha to check it out. Nezha sassed the Yaksha, who attacked him in a fury and got insta-killed.
-Ao Guang's soldiers reported the Yaksha's death. Ao Bing overheard the whole thing, asked to go deal with this random brat, and was granted permission by his father.
-Ao Bing rode out of the waves on his steed, and went "Who are you, sassy lost child, and did you just kill my Yaksha?!" And Nezha was like "Yeah, so what? Talk shit, get hit."
-Ao Bing charged Nezha with his weapon in a fury, got dragged down his steed by the sash, and was promptly bonked on the head by the Qiankun Ring, which reverted him to his dragon form.
-Nezha then pulled out his tendons to make a belt for Li Jing's armor and returned to Chentang Pass. Furious, Ao Guang hurried his way to Li Jing's mansion and accused him for the whole multiple homicide thing.
-Li Jing's first reaction was "My kid's only 7 and never goes out of the door, he can't possibly kill yours!" Then, when he indeed asked Nezha, Nezha flat-out admits it and went out to meet Ao Guang like "Yeah, sorry, doesn't know that's your kid. Anyways, here's his tendons, undamaged and untouched."
-Ao Guang, unsurprisingly, did not take it well and stormed off to press charges to the JE. Faced with his angry crying parents, Nezha also knew he had fucked up, and went to his master Taiyi for help.
-Taiyi's advice? Go ambush the dragon king on his way to complain to the JE and beat him up, mobster-style. Which Nezha promptly did, forcing Ao Guang to turn into a little snake and stay in his sleeves, to be carried back to Chentang Pass.
-The beatdown does not convince Ao Guang not to press charges. In fact, he said he'd get the other dragon kings of the Four Seas to press charges together. Li Jing raged at Nezha again, who assured him that it was alright, like, his master said he was destined to assist some Sage King and stuff.
-He then wandered into the back garden, picked up the Qiankun Bow and Sky-shaking Arrows of the Yellow Emperor that were, uh, just kept there in the family attic, and decided to do some archery practice.
-Sadly, he didn't know how far that arrow would go. It flew all the way to the White Bone Cave, abode of Lady Shiji the Rock Demoness, and went straight through the throat of one of her two disciples, the Verdant Cloud Boy.
-Since Li Jing also carved his name onto the arrow (…), Lady Shiji headed immediately to his place and whisked him away with her treasure, the Eight Trigrams Hankerchief.
-At her place, Li Jing pleaded that he really didn't do it, since the Qiankun Bow was a mystical ancient weapon no one could use in a long, long time, and Shiji released him back to Chentang Pass to find the true culprit. At which point he put two and two together, found out it was Nezha again, and told him to go answer to Shiji together with him.
-Nezha, who did not think this was his fault, smacked Shiji's other disciple, the Colored Cloud Boy on the head with his Qiankun Ring, when he came out of the cave on his master's orders. Shiji was even less happy about that, took his weapons away with a single swipe of her sleeves, then chased him all the way to Taiyi's place.
-At which point Taiyi was like "Well, if you want Nezha to pay for his crimes, how about we go to the Jade Emptiness Palace together and let my master (Yuanshi Tianzun) sort it out?" Shiji refused, stating that he was just using his master's authority to lord over her and unfairly protect his disciple.
-Taiyi then revealed the Chan-Jie division that would later become a huge thing in the War of Investiture, and basically went "Sorry that your student died in Nezha's archery accident, Lady Shiji, but it is literally Fated to Happen, which means you totally shouldn't be mad at me or him."
-Shiji did not buy that explanation at all, and they fought. Taiyi blocked her hankerchief when she tried to use it, then threw the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover over her head, burning her to death and reverting her to her true form——a rock.
-Taiyi then informed Nezha that with JE's permission, Ao Guang had gathered the other dragon kings to go after Nezha's parents. Nezha begged him to save them, and his advice was...well, "kill yourself and the dragon kings will let them go". Literally.
-So Nezha did, which was very graphically described in the novel, after which his soul drifted off to Taiyi's place.
-Taiyi told him to go to his mother and tell her to build a temple for him at Mt. Cuiping. He did, and Lady Yin woke up from her dream crying.
-Upon learning the reason why, Li Jing yelled at her for crying after Nezha had brought all these troubles upon their family. Nezha's soul then haunted her in her dreams for a week or so, until she finally relented and built him a temple in secret.
-Half a year later, Li Jing found out about the temple while Nezha's soul was out and away for some unknown reasons. In a fit of rage, he smashed Nezha's statue and burned the temple down (I talk about how this resembles the destruction of 淫祠, illicit cults in IRL history here).
-Nezha returned to his temple only to find it in ruins, at which point he went back to Taiyi, who did the Lotus Resurrection thing and gave him back his weapons, together with a new spear, the Wind-Fire Wheels and a golden brick.
-Nezha immediately rushed back to Chentang Pass to take revenge, stating that after the whole "returning his flesh and blood" thing, they were basically unrelated and didn't owe each other anything, so he was perfectly justified to go after Li Jing for the destruction of his temple.
-They fought. Li Jing, quickly exhausted, turned tail and fled using the Daoist arts of Earth Travel, at which point he ran into Muzha. While they were talking, Nezha caught up with them.
-Muzha was like "How dare you!" and Nezha replied with "Who the hell are you?" Only after Muzha said his name out loud did he recognize his brother and recount the whole story.
-Muzha retorted that "Parents can do no wrong". Nezha pointed out that after his suicide, they were no longer father and son, and told him to stand aside.
-Muzha whipped out his sword to fight him. Concerned that Li Jing might get away in the meantime, Nezha threw his golden brick at Muzha, hitting him in the back and knocking him down.
-The chase continued. Li Jing, knowing that he couldn't run away forever, was ready to commit suicide instead of facing the disgrace of being struck down by his son.
-However, Jinzha's master, Wenshu, suddenly showed up to rescue him. Nezha demanded that Wenshu release Li Jing from his abode, and if he didn't, he'd poke three holes in Wenshu instead.
"And who are you, to make such claims?"
"I am Nezha, disciple of Master Taiyi!"
"Never heard of you. You can throw a tantrum elsewhere, but not here, and if you keep this up, you are in for a spanking."
-Nezha attacked him. In return, Wenshu unleashed his treasure, the Flying Dragon Pillar, tying Nezha onto it. He then summoned Jinzha, handed him a walking stick, and told Jinzha to give him a good whipping.
-Then Taiyi showed up to rescue him, telling Nezha to bow to Wenshu, his Daoist uncle (Context: Taiyi and Wenshu are both among the 12 Immortals of the Chan Sect), and scolded Li Jing a bit for the temple-burning thing.
-Then he told the two to get along and go their separate ways. Nezha was delighted, seeing it as basically a free pass to resume his revenge the moment he was out of his master's sight, and indeed, he did.
-Then Sage Randeng (also of the Chan Sect) showed up, gave Li Jing a buff, and told him to fight Nezha again. Nezha, having witnessed the whole thing and reached an impasse in the fight, attacked Randeng in an attempt to disable the buff.
-Randeng was not happy about this "unprovoked" attack on an innocent bystander, so he dropped a pagoda out of his sleeves and onto Nezha, trapping him inside.
-On Randeng's command, flames ignited inside the pagoda. At last, Nezha pleaded for the sage to release him, under the condition that he'd call Li Jing father (grrrr grrrr) again.
-He was planning to pull a second "resume patricide arc" the moment Randeng left, until the sage gave the pagoda to Li Jing and told them to go back to Chentang Pass and Taiyi's place respectively, to wait until the War of Investiture formally began.
-And they did: Nezha was sent to rescue Huang Feihu during his escape from the Five Passes in Chapter 34, while Li Jing only showed up much later in Chapter 64, to kill a fleeing Luo Xuan after he got all of his fire-based treasures neutralized and taken away by Princess Longji.
-I will not do a full campaign-by-campaign summary of Nezha's performance in the War of Investiture proper, for this post is already long enough.
-The broadest overview: together with his senior Daoist brother Yang Jian, Nezha was one of the biggest powerhouses on the Chan/Zhou side.
-His total kill count in the novel (only counting the named/deified ones) is 15, which is actually more than Yang Jian's (12-13).
-Much like Yang Jian, he was often the one who survived lethal attacks and AOE plague spells while the others were taken out. His lotus body also made him impervious to spells and treasures that work directly on the soul, usually by pulling it out of the body.
-After suffering an injury from the Blood-melting Knife of Yu Hua/his master Yu Yuan, Nezha was given his final power-up at Taiyi's place via three cups of wine and three "fire jujubes", enabling him to transform into his Three-headed, Eight-armed Form.
-At the end of the novel, Nezha, together with Li Jing, Jinzha, Muzha, Yang Jian, Weihu and Lei Zhenzi, became "Sages in Flesh"——which I understood as "a better sort of gods/immortals that don't receive their godhood via death and deification".
-The 6+ weapons he has: Qiankun Ring, Huntian Sash, Fire-tipped Spear, Golden Brick, Wind-Fire Wheel (in its most popular "hot wheels" depiction), Yin-Yang Swords, Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover
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